Ireland in Conflict 1922-1998 by Fraser T. G.;

Author:Fraser, T. G.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1112357
Publisher: Routledge

6

The Troubles begin

The fortunes of the Unionist Party, and of Northern Ireland politics generally, might just have been different if O’Neill had been succeeded by his ablest critic, Brian Faulkner, but by one vote Unionist MPs elected instead Major James Chichester-Clark. Chichester-Clark’s task was unenviable. Belfast had not featured prominently in the tumultuous winter of 1968–1969 but since the two communities there had been deeply affected by events, this was now to change. Tensions in parts of west and north Belfast came to a head at the end of the annual Twelfth of July processions when serious rioting occurred. This was an ugly portent of what was soon to happen in the city, but in the event it was Derry which once more provided the flashpoint. The occasion was the annual parade of the Apprentice Boys to commemorate the raising of the siege in 1689. This had often been a tense affair but in 1969 it held all the potential for disaster, especially after the funeral on 19 July of Samuel Devenney, a Bogside man who had been assaulted by police in his home in April. His funeral proved the signal for the formation of a new body, the Derry Citizens Defence Association, the avowed aim of which was to defend nationalist areas from police and loyalist incursions but which also included republicans keen to hasten the destabilisation of Northern Ireland.

On the afternoon of 12 August, as the Apprentice Boys clubs made their way through Waterloo Place on the edge of the Bogside, stones were thrown, initiating disturbances which were to grow in intensity over the next two days. The ‘Battle of the Bogside’, as it came to be known, stretched the police to the limit of their capacity. On the afternoon of 14 August, men of the Prince of Wales Own Regiment deployed on the edges of the Bogside. Their presence calmed the situation but also set Northern Ireland’s affairs on a new course. Serious though the situation in Derry had been, it was only a prelude to something that informed observers had feared for months, widespread sectarian rioting in Belfast. Two things provided the immediate trigger. The first was an appeal on 13 August by leaders in the Bogside for assistance in diverting police resources from Derry, a call heeded by some civil rights activists. The second was a broadcast by the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, that his government could no longer stand by, creating hopes among nationalists and fears among unionists, both illusory, that the Irish army was about to intervene.

The rioting in west and north Belfast on the night of 14–15 August demonstrated the extent to which the fabric of Northern Ireland had unravelled. As rival crowds clashed in the narrow streets between the Shankill and the Falls, a Protestant, Herbert Roy, was killed by gunfire. The police responded with machine-gun fire from armoured cars, in the course of which a nine-year-old Catholic boy, Patrick Rooney, was killed in his home. Particularly intense sectarian rioting spread in the Ardoyne where three-fifths of the houses in Bombay Street were burned out by a Protestant mob.

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